


6 Steps to Falling Asleep Right Away

by completeclarity



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Graphic Description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:51:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4003045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completeclarity/pseuds/completeclarity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's read every article online about how to sleep better and skimmed every self-help book about sleep in the local book store. But weirdly enough, every first line in every book and article reads: Step 1. Kill your neighbour. So who is she to contradict the experts?</p>
            </blockquote>





	6 Steps to Falling Asleep Right Away

**Author's Note:**

> College really teaches you a lot: physics, art history, the value of a good pair of earplugs. College also changes you a lot from a nice, pretty normal person to a raging psychopath.  
> This is all hypothetical, of course. I'm not really a murderous college girl, of course. This isn't about you, Maxwell the guitar guy on the 12th floor, of course.

Liv hasn't slept for what felt like years. She knows it's only been a few months, but floating in the liminal space between true sleep and wakefulness, waiting in expectation for the next noise to wake her up makes time stretch out to infinity. Which noise will it be? The chimes of her cell phone alarm or the guitar of the wannabe rock star next door? Liv waits and of course, the guitar is the one to do the job, her sure thing. That guitar, her constant companion in waiting for the nights to pass and watching the sun rise every morning. Every day, for months now, since the last time she had real sleep, Liv wonders if today's the day she murders her next door neighbour.  


She jokes, of course. She would never do that for real. Not when the Neighbour is over six feet, built like a wrestler, and is constantly hopped up on all sorts of weird drugs. She would, of course, have to plan. When one hasn't slept in weeks and has infinite time in liminal space, all one has is time and time, to think about buying ear plugs that work, about melatonin and stronger, more illegal drugs, about arson versus the visceral pleasure of sinking a knife into an eyeball while the other eye is fixed on the guitar she will have smashed beforehand. Not that Liv has ever committed such acts of violence. She is a good person, and of course, she's tried other things before. She's read every article online about how to sleep better and skimmed every self-help book about sleep in the local book store. But weirdly enough, every first line in every book and article reads: Step 1. Kill your neighbour. So who is she to contradict the experts?  


In the book she is reading from right now there's apparently five other steps, but Liv didn't see anything other than step 1 because she is reading the preview on Google Books and she isn't going to buy the rest of the book. It is $45 and if Liv didn't buy the $20 stupid piece of shit Young Writer's Guide for her introduction writing class, she isn't going to spend even more on a book when she could guess the rest of the steps.  


Step 1. Kill your neighbour.  


Step 2 to 6. Sleep like the dead.  


Done. That's $45 worth of advice.  


Now don't get her wrong. She's not trying to be blasé about killing someone. She doesn't want to call it murder because that's not the exactly what it is. Liv honestly believes this guy really deserves it. Since the start of the semester, Liv has been collecting this guy's wrongdoings, locking them into a mental folder in her mind:  


* August 29th: left a halal takeout box in the hallway.

* August 30th: box still there. The smell of rotting lettuce and old mayonnaise and yogurt mingles with the smell of weed. Great. He's going to be one of those guys.

* September 4th: didn't show up to the floor meeting and Liv spent all week practicing what to say to him for when the Resident Advisor asks them to introduce themselves to their neighbours. She will be polite, but firm about the amount of noise he is making and the amount of weed he is smoking. She doesn't want to seem stuffy and uptight, but she also doesn't want to be a pushover. It's like a dog pissing on stuff to show his alpha status. Liv has to pee on this guy before this guy shits all over her. She will say hi, introduce herself, and then bring up his amazing taste in music that she can hear through the walls. Liv doesn't actually like his stupid White Guy with a Guitar music, but she doesn't want to be _overtly_ mean. Then after they talk about John Mayer or James Blunt or whoever WGWG bullshit he listens to, Liv can bring up keeping it down. He'll laugh and apologize. Liv will be magnanimous and say it's okay, even though she's lying. Not lying, because it will be okay after he stops. Then they'll part ways and Liv will never have to deal with it again. But he didn't show up, so Liv wasted all week for nothing.

* September 8th: Morning, 10:07 am- woke up to the sounds of sex coming from next door. The girl was real vocal about her appreciation of his efforts. Morning, 10:25 am- the sounds of sex were replaced by the guitar. They started singing _Wonderwall_ together. Great. Morning, 11:00 am- Second wind. Le petit mort numero deux. Morning, 11:05 am- now he's strumming idle chords on his guitar. Gross. Liv can't even start to imagine what kind of boring sex starts and ends with this guy serenading this girl with his white guy guitar music. Do they hold hands while he's thrusting? Look into each other's eyes as the sweat drippings down from his scalp onto her skin? All that good sappy stuff. Liv considers knocking on his door, but without the presence of the RA in an RA sanctioned event she couldn't do it.

That was at the start of the school year. It's March now. She's collected loads more. Based on the evidence, it's not really murder. Justified homicide at least. Self-defense. Studies show that people living in high stress situations are more likely to self-harm, so science says that he's hurting her. Indirectly, but still. Science says so and of course science would know.  
  


It is 1 am on a Tuesday. By the hallway light coming from the crack under her door, Liv can see her desk, stacked high with everything that she needs to sort, but can't be bothered to: her Italian notes from last year, piled higher than the first shelf of the hutch attached to the desk and a box of opened pads and a prescription she never filled and a handful of pens, some dried up and some still with life and a handful of pencils, all with broken tips because Liv lost her pencil sharpener in the mess of facial creams and hand lotions piled behind the Italian notes, all of them travel sized that her parents sent her but she would never use and a box of Q-tips and three mugs with dried up coffee on the bottom on the top shelf, the maroon one sitting precariously on the edge and two empty orange prescription bottles that she never threw out and a pile of college ruled notebooks on top of which a opened box of a dozen rainbow sprinkled honey glazed donuts sat missing three and the rest picked of their sprinkles and a busted old electric kettle ̶ illegal for dorm rooms ̶ sat in full view of the world and on top of that, sitting on the second shelf is _Parallel Lives_ by Plutarch followed by _The Life of Julius Caesar_ by Mark Alperstein next to _The Rise of the Holy Roman Empire_ by Dr. Henry Abramowicz, then _Reading the Old Testament: an Introduction to the Hebrew Bible_ by Barry L. Bandstra pressed against _Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?_ by Morton Smith and Catherine's DVD of _Inglourious Basterds_ which she left behind a while ago and a stack of monthly transactions from Citibank that she hadn't bothered to open.  


Sometimes when Liv can't sleep, she rolls onto her side, looks at the desk, and think about finally cleaning her desk. Maybe tomorrow, when she was feeling more awake and alert. Then the moaning and banging starts from next door, the rhythmic thumping shaking her bed, banging her head against the headboard. Liv could move her head, save herself from the vicious bump she knows will form tomorrow, but she feels the need to endure, to suffer, collect more sins, make the crime more justifiable. When they drag her into the courtroom, she can turn to the jury, tilt her head, part her hair, and show them the horrible bump growing like a tumour, Jabba the Hutt on her scalp. Look, she can add some tears as she prods the lump, look at what he did. The jury, more than half being women, because her defense will pick some sympathetic, older, prudish type who will take a look at the Neighbour with his blond hair and dopey stoner smile and feel that automatic tug of revulsion deep in their stomach from when they swallowed what their parents taught them as children. They will tear up with Liv and all of them will say yes, that was justified, of course she would have killed him, I would have also _insert murder method here_ him as well.  


The tremors, a Richter 3.0, travels down the wall, across the linoleum floor, and up the desk where the maroon mug decides to end it all. Liv follows its short trip down from the top of the hutch to land in the box of donuts. The box tips and scatters its inhabitants across the off-white floor. The maroon mug survives, but loses its handle. The donuts roll around, the face up ones showing the their pockmarks. So what if they've been sitting on the desk for more than two weeks now? She might have still eaten them or given them to that homeless guy that sits outside of Citibank. The Neighbour practically picked up the box and threw it on the floor right in front of her. More charges to add to the list. The bailiff, a stern black man with a thick moustache will frown as Liv describes how the donuts rolled around her floor, wasted forever, and how the mug dove off the desk to try to escape the horrific sounds the Neighbour's girl was making, like a stake being shoved up a goat's rectum. Great, now she's imagining the Neighbour having sex with a goat. Pervert. The guy deserves to be shanked.  


Liv gets up and jumps off the bed. She lands on a donut. Hardened glaze shell cracks under her heel. It hurts initially, but then starts to feel kind of good in a exfoliating kind of way as she rubs her foot over the edges of the stale donut. She lifts the foot and stomps down on the donut. It crumbles in two, then in five, then in more pieces than Liv can count. She keeps stomping and stomping. _Thump crackle thump crackle_. Like larger pieces of bone that don't completely burn after a cremation, you have to manually break it up, put some effort into it yourself.  
  


There's something about the walls of dorm halls that just trap the smell of careless college students. Liv imagines that the contractor and the builders sat down at the planning table, looked at their budget and a list of building supplies, then said, "Fuck this. Let's build the walls out of the shittiest, thinnest materials, something porous that will hold the odor of years of weed usage and underage drinking and midnight burritos. And because they have to live here, they're forced to live in a hell of their own making." Then the builders all let out a "Muahahaha." Yes, they agreed, let's punish them for being young and educated, with the rest of their lives ahead of them, presumably not working manual labour jobs.  


Liv sighs and rubs her head. She doesn't really mean that, of course. Why does she have to be so insensitive? That's just her privilege coming out. Sometimes she envies people with menial jobs, their minds freed from the burden of the complex thoughts that plague her each day. No, that's not right either. How can she say those things? Her mother, after escaping Communist China, worked at a menial job, is still working at that menial job to put Liv through college so Liv can think these horrible thoughts.  


Her mother makes fancy computer chips. Her pianist's fingers made rough and cracked from sticking resistors and LEDs onto circuit boards; her lovely soprano made a smoker's rasp from breathing in the soldering gases. Her mother loved playing the piano. They had inherited an old piano from a family friend who didn't want it anymore. Liv and her mother were always so proud of their piano. It was an upright, the wood finish faded away from age, but it had dignified look. Under the lid, the maker had burnt his name: Julius Winter. How cool was that? Like the 1900s version of owning a guitar that Jimi Hendrix signed. It was the most beautiful and expensive thing she and her mother owned, even though it was given to them for free. One of the keys was broken, but they couldn't afford to replace it. When her mother played, she would hum the note of the broken key every time her finger sank down and nothing sounded.  


A young and stupid Liv showed her piano to a friend. He owned a baby grand piano, only a year old. Her friend adopted it straight out of the factory. To Liv, that was kind of sad. Liv had cheerfully pounded on her centenarian piano's keys, including the soundless one because Liv was stupidly proud of the broken key. Like a crooked nose or a scar, it showed that the piano survived years of hardship. A veritable badass of pianos. She told her friend that her Julian Winter piano would kick his baby grand's butt. But her friend mocked her, told her: fact- the older the piano, the more worthless it becomes. By that measure, her hundred year old piano would be worth next to nothing. The most expensive thing they owned, the pride of her mother's life. Liv never touched that piano again. Her mother's hands became too stiff and cracked to play. All of the piano's keys became soundless.  


Of course the Neighbour probably never owned an old piano with a broken key. Liv was there the day he and his equally blonde girlfriend moved in his keyboard. She had followed them into the elevator on the ground floor. The neighbour was so involved in his conversation with his girlfriend, probably about weed or video games or the orchestra he was setting up in his room, that he didn't even say hi to Liv. Liv had wondered if she should say hi first. It's only polite. because they're neighbours, but then again, neighbours should have the courtesy of not keeping their neighbours up with music and sex. But she could mention that after she said hi. Wait, no, that would make the rest of the elevator ride and the long walk down the hallway super awkward. She should say hi closer to their doors, but would that be weird? Like they rode sixteen floors up and walked down the hallway and she didn't speak up once. And plus, he and his girlfriend would still be carrying the keyboard. They would probably think she's rude for holding them up at their door. Okay, hold up, she's not rude, he's rude, Liv reminded herself sternly. She was not the one who woke people up at a ridiculous hour and kept them up till the same ridiculous hour the next day and didn't say hi to them in the elevator while making people feel obligated to say hi first and make them plan out ridiculously detailed speeches about their noise issue at the risk of appearing rude while thinking horribly rude thoughts about said people because he had the gall of bringing such ridiculously heavy objects into their dorm. He _is_ rude. Liv _is_ considerate, polite, cheerful, considerate and her only flaw might be that she's _too_ considerate because any sane person would have made chlorine gas from the bleach and drain cleaner they could have stolen from the unguarded custodial karts and piped it into their neighbour's room through a tiny hole they dug into their adjoining wall.  


"Excuse me?"  


Liv looked up. The Neighbour and his girlfriend was staring at her. Oh shit. Liv had said everything out loud.  


"Excuse me, we need to get off on this floor."  


She didn't say those things out loud after all, but Liv then realized that the Neighbour didn't recognize her.  


"Could you just step out for a second? Really appreciate it!"  


Liv stepped out of the elevator.  


"Could you also hold the door open for us?"  


Liv didn't flinch as the closing elevator door slammed into her arm and stutter open again, nor did she flinch as the corner of the keyboard scrapped that same arm. They didn't apologize.  


"Thanks a lot!"  


The Neighbour and his girlfriend waddled off. As they passed Liv, they each showed her a sunny smile. Liv thought about cutting off their fleshy lips, leaving jagged bleeding holes in their faces, see if they smile ever again. Mortified, she steps back into the elevator. Over the rushing noise in her head, she heard the Neighbour shout, "Hey thanks! Really appreciate it!"  


Liv nods as the elevator door closes and rides the elevator all the way down to the ground floor. She walks the sixteen flights up to her room. That's a lot of time to think and stew and collate the collection of crimes, the Neighbour's sins. Similar to floating in liminal space, Liv started to lose track of time. Sixteen flights turn into an infinite staircase. _Thonk thonk thonk thonk thonk thonk_ up the steps. _Tap tap tap_ around the landing. _Thonk thonk thonk thonk thonk thonk_ up the steps. _Tap tap tap_ around the landing. A bit like menial labour. A bit like sleep walking.  
  


Catherine is Liv's best friend in college. She is a small Chinese girl who think she's the star of a Lil Wayne video. She's barely five feet and has no butt to speak of, but that doesn't stop her from trying to twerk at frat parties. Liv has never seen a rap video babe wearing the horn-rimmed glasses that their mother picked out for them, but then again, Liv doesn't really watch music videos. She would ask Catherine for recommendations, but she doesn't want to encourage Catherine's behaviour. In public, Catherine will call her "ho" or "my nigga" or "sista." Once Liv tried to explain the inappropriateness of the appropriation of black culture to Catherine, but Catherine, without irony, explained back that a black man once told her that she had the soul of a sassy black woman so that makes it okay for her to use black slang and pronounce "that" and "this" with a "d" in front so they sound like "dat" and "dis." It's almost enough to drive Liv to stab someone. But not Catherine of course. Catherine's her closest friend in college.  


Why are they even friends? Liv asks herself that sometimes. Like sometimes she wonders why she bothers with being considerate and polite to anyone in this place when no one seems to appreciate it or return the favour and all Liv wants to do is disable the cafeteria alarm and set a grease fire on the gross salad bar and breathe in the fumes of the day old kale bowls they serve here. Propinquity, Liv thinks. Like slaves or dogs stuck in kennels who bond out of propinquity.  


Liv tells Catherine about the Neighbour. Catherine nods eagerly, "The really tall one? I've seen him around. He is so hot for a white guy. Dat ass, man."  


Liv explains about the music.  


"What kind of music?"  


Liv rolls her eyes. So not the point. It wasn't rap, so why is Catherine interested?  


"Why do you think that I only listen to rap music? I listen to other stuff. Dat Tchaikovsky dude is dank."  


This is why Liv hates Catherine. She rubs her eyes, then her temple.  


"You not gettin' sleep?" Catherine leans across the dining hall table into Liv's sphere of solitude. Liv shuffles her chair back. Catherine has salami breath from her sandwich. She is breaking two of Liv's biggest rules: personal space and good dental hygiene. It makes her want to shove a brush covered in hydrochloric acid into Catherine's mouth.  


"You want me to talk to him?"  


That was the last thing Liv wanted. Catherine is a bowling ball of a human being.  


"No, brah. I'll go talk to him. He can't keep buggin' you like dis." Catherine leaps up, knocking over her chair and sends a shockwave down the table. Liv can see a girl at the end, reading a thick textbook look up, annoyed. Mortified, Liv picks up the chair and grabs at Catherine who's mid-roll on the table to get to the other side.  


"Let's run the train on dis bitch."  


Liv chases Catherine back to her dorm hall. For such a tiny Asian with short legs, Catherine is so fast and full of endless energy. Like a child, like the child she is, Liv thinks. Or maybe Liv is out of shape. No, Catherine is just freakishly fast for her size. She thinks about cutting off one of Catherine's feet, maybe cutting an Achilles tendon. Maybe then she would be able to keep up. She misses Catherine at the elevator and runs up stairs. By the time she reaches her floor, Liv can hear Catherine pounding on the door. As she rounds the corner, she hears the Neighbour's voice. Liv darts back and hides. Okay, she doesn't hide. She just doesn't want to be an accomplice to Catherine's confrontation with the Neighbour. Liv didn't need or want Catherine's help. She'll probably say something horrible, call him the N-word, then embarrass herself by talking about T-Pain or something. Liv has a whole plan and a speech. She's just waiting for an opportunity, a floor meeting or a floor event or a floor dinner.  


"Hey man. I'm a friend of the chick that lives next to you. You gotta calm down with the guitar and piano and music and shit."  


Liv can't hear the reply, but she imagines it goes something like, "How dare you? I am an piano artist" with a "tee" in artist, _arteest_ , like a French asshole.  


"Yeah dude. It gets loud and my friend hasn't been sleepin' well, so I'll tell you where you can stick your guitar!"  


Liv makes a noise of exasperation. Oh god.  


"In the practice rooms! No, seriously dude. Dat's why we have practice rooms in the basement. Practice there."  


"Oh shoot. I'm really sorry! Sometimes I get really enthusiastic about playing! I'll try to keep it down!"  


Wait, what?  


"Hey, no big. My friend would supes appreciate it. She's super polite so she didn't want to bring it up, but dat's real cool. You ain't a busta."  


What just happened? Liv's still standing around corner when they exchange goodbyes and the Neighbour closes his door. Catherine walks down the hall, takes a sharp turn and bumps straight into Liv, still cowering behind the wall.  


"Oh hey! Dude! Were you just standing here? I sorted it out!"  


Liv's furious at Catherine. She didn't sort anything out! She embarrassed Liv with her stupid "dank" and "busta."  


"What the hell are you talkin' about? I talked to your neighbour. He understands now and he's going to keep it down so you can sleep!"  


Liv has a plan! She didn't need Catherine to talk to the Neighbour. She could have handled it herself.  


"No, you wouldn't. You would have just quietly took it up the ass from this guy for the rest of the year. I took care of it for you. Sorry I annoyed you with my friendship!"  


Liv is about three seconds from sticking her thumbs into Catherine's eyes when the RA steps out and asks Catherine to stop shouting in the hallway. Catherine tells her to "suck a dick" and that's when the RA writes them up.  
  


That little incident in the hallway lands Liv and Catherine in a conflict resolution workshop. It was supposed to be an anger management workshop, but apparently that was overbooked until April, so RA agreed to send them to a different one instead. Liv would have preferred to go to the respect workshop, but Catherine started singing Aretha Franklin at the top of her lungs and wouldn't stop so Liv selected the one Catherine didn't want to go to.  


In the workshop, people gravitate towards groups organized by colour. Kind of like prison where you stick with your own race. There's two vaguely Latino looking students sitting down already, a group of black students near the door, a white boy and a white girl hovering by the windows, and one lone Asian girl who perks up when Catherine and Liv walk through the door. Liv quickly walks to a chair and sits down, pretending not to notice the Asian girl's eager eyes. 

Thankfully the instructor starts an ice breaker before the girl can approach them.  


Catherine leans over and whispers, "I fuckin' love ice breakers. I'm so good at them."  


Liv rolls her eyes. Who the hell over the age of summer camper likes ice breakers? And also, Liv is not speaking to Catherine. She is still angry about the Neighbour situation.  


A guy in a polo starts. Liv clocks him as a total prep because of his stupid artificially natural bed-head. He gives everyone an eager smile and says, "Hi! I'm Dave. I'm a sophomore and I'm a sloth, I guess. Because I'm pretty lazy and I love to sleep."  


He gives a chuckle and everyone laughs with him, but to Liv, it's less of a ha-ha laugh and more of a hehhh laugh. Liv gives him a smile because it's only polite. A tiny brunette with their college's logo stamp across her chest starts talking. "Hi, I'm Lily. I'm a sophomore as well. I'm a cat because they're my favourite animals and I guess I'm kinda playful like a cat."  


She has a baby voice. It's annoying as hell. Liv would burn this whole room down if it meant never having to listen to this bitch talk ever again. Liv smiles at her. Catherine goes next.  


"What up? Catherine. Senior. I admire the Siamese fighting fish because I also am beautiful and want to fight everyone."  


Everyone stares at Catherine. She's smiles back, stupid and ignorant of how stupid and ignorant she is. Liv’s smile is now snowballing past the point of no return; it's threatening to take over her entire face, crack it clean in half. The instructor gives Catherine a quizzical grimace and says, "That's interesting. Do you think that's conducive to," she gestures around the room, "conflict resolution?"  


Catherine shrugs, "Yeah, I guess. Why not?"  


Liv is so embarrassed for her. The instructor asks, "Can you clarify?"  


"Yeah, okay. I mean what’s the point of not being upfront about everything? What's the point of dancing around shit when you can just get it all in the open and talk it out. Fuck being all polite and PC. If you don't say shit, how will I know where I stand with you?"  


Silence, then Catherine adds, "Boom! Mic drop."  


With that, Liv calmly gets up, collects her stuff, and walks out of the room. She doesn't turn back when Catherine calls her name.  
  


Liv and the Neighbour rides the elevator up together. He's fiddling with something on his phone. She's fingering the strap of her bag. In the bag is a bottle of kerosene and a long-stemmed lighter.  


They step out of the elevator together. The Neighbour looks surprised.  


"Hey, do you live on this floor?"  


Liv nods. The Neighbour runs a hand through his hair, "I've never seen you around here! I'm sorry!"  


Liv shrugs and walks slightly faster.  


"To be fair though, there's a lot of people on this floor. It's sad that we don't have a lot of floor events. I remember knowing everyone on my floor freshmen year."  


Liv reaches her door and pulls out her keycard. The Neighbour makes a noise of surprise, "Oh! Neighbours! Are you the one with the friend? Am I disturbing you with my music? She said I was. I'm sorry, man! I don't mean to. I just really love music, you know. I'm learning how to play the piano!"  


Liv thinks about her mother. The way her hands moved over the keys, so fluidly it was unnatural and disturbing, like a ten-legged millipede. She never stumbled over scales and arpeggios, not the way the Neighbour did in the early mornings. He would play the same scale over and over again, realizing that he was doing something wrong because it just didn't sound right, but not realizing that the last two notes in the scale are a semitone interval, not a whole tone. Her mother never made a mistake, not even when she played the broken key and nothing came forth from her old piano. Once, Liv sat down at the piano and just pressed the broken key over and over again. Liv didn't really understand how pianos made music, but she thought that maybe something was stuck and if she hit it hard enough or enough times, it would unstick and the key would work again. She had hit it over and over and over and over. Thunk thunk thunk thunk went the key, but nothing happened. It reminded her of the way the Neighbour kept going over those last two notes: _ti do ti do ti do_ , but it never changed to sound right. What did people say about doing the same thing and expecting something different?  


"Does it annoy you?"  


Liv shakes her head and smiles at the Neighbour. The Neighbour smiles back.  


"Cool. I'm glad. I don't know how to live without my music. See ya around! Bye!"  


He goes inside. Liv waits until she hears him pull out his guitar and start playing, then she walks over to his door, pulls out the bottle of kerosene, and sprays it all over the door. Then she rips the lighter out of its packaging, clicks it on, and touches it to several spots on the door. Once the fire is sufficiently blazing away, Liv walks back to her room and goes in.  


Liv undresses and climbs into bed. The wall next to her ear is warmer than usual, but it might be her imagination. Of course she does have a vivid imagination. The polyphony of traffic, music, and wind is replaced by the sound of the crackling of paint, the snapping of the fire, and faint cries. Liv pats herself on the back, job well done, and finally falls into the first real sleep she's had since before she can think.


End file.
